


A Lady at the Gates of Hell: Or, a Fall from Grace in Ten Scenes

by Guede



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Amorality, Cock Cages, Corsetry, Crossdressing, Dark Stiles, Dom/sub, Experimental Style, F/M, Gambling, Gothic, Humiliation, Impact Play, Light Bondage, Lydia-centric, M/M, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Overstimulation, Revenge, Sex Toys, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-27 21:31:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10817151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: When Lydia’s husband leaves her, Lydia sees no reason why she shouldn’t seek other resources, even if that includes a known swindler and a nobleman associated with a mysterious occult club.5/7/17:Added prequel/pwp chapter with Chris/Sheriff.





	1. Chapter 1

When Lydia’s husband leaves her, she’s not entirely without resources. Her husband’s parents have enough of a sense of propriety to make certain she has a comfortable residence—even if below her social standing—and a sufficient income to avoid poverty. She’s still young and beautiful enough to have her pick of replacements in bed, provided that they keep their mouths shut when out of it. And she has a few devoted friends who sympathize with her rather than with her husband’s name, or wealth, or estates, none of which he would’ve managed to have kept if it hadn’t been for her.

“Really, my heart goes out to the poor girl. She’ll have her hands full keeping her own jewels in her jewelry box, let alone any of the paste gewgaws I’m sure he’s showered her with,” Lydia tells the McCalls when they come, bearing fresh lamb for the kitchen to roast and the silent rebuke to all the gossips in the form of their coach standing idle before the house.

It’s a very kind thought of them, lending their name that way, even though the McCall coat of arms is so new Lydia half-thinks to offer their coachman the stables, so that the drizzle outside won’t wash off the paint, and the Argent name, while far more established, has also stood far higher above the muck than it does now. Very kind indeed, for them to support a fellow outcast when it’s really only by sheer oblivious good nature on Scott’s part and an iron smile on Allison’s that the pair of them can move about in high society at all. Very kind.

Lydia considers that kindness, and what she might do with it, and she’s nearly decided when Allison suddenly presses forward and puts her hand on Lydia’s arm. “Do let’s sit down and talk about better things,” she says, with a smile as sweet as honey, eyes guileless as the lamb they had slaughtered.

And a grip that threatens the integrity of the kidskin glove on her hand and the heavy silk covering Lydia’s arm. Lydia glances down at the woman’s hand and when she raises her eyes, Allison’s smile widens, showing far too much tooth for a gentlewoman.

“Yes, let’s,” Lydia says slowly, and Allison withdraws her hand to adjust where her shawl’s fallen from her shoulder. The other woman has the cream-and-roses complexion that’s fashionable, but as her arm lifts, a sliver of tanned skin is bared between glove and cuff, and Lydia recalls that Allison is known for her love of the outdoors, and most unladylike athleticism. “I suppose I will need to fill in the time, now that I neither have Jackson’s misadventures to sweep up after, nor his money to fund the entertaining that kept them swept under the rug.”

“Well, at least you don’t have to worry about spending so much to keep up the house, or having to put up with people you don’t like,” Scott says reassuringly, like the social ignorant he is. When he winces, Lydia doesn’t entertain any hope that Allison’s subtle dig at his ribs has enlightened him. “That is, not that the house doesn’t look nice anyway. And you know, if you ever—”

Lydia puts her lips together and turns up their corners. It is not a smile. “I thank you, but I don’t believe that will ever be your concern.”

Scott winces again, then looks helplessly at Allison. She has no more sense about social standing than her husband, but at least she recognizes that that’s a difference of opinion between them and Lydia. “We’re having a hunt at our country house in two weeks, and you’re welcome to come. It might be good to leave the—change the scenery, and do something that keeps your mind and body occupied,” Allison offers.

“A hunt.” Then Lydia gazes around her, at the exquisite wallpaper, colors so vibrantly fragile that the drapes have to be kept half-drawn at all times to avoid fading under the sunlight, the porcelain so fine that the staff is trained to use only silk clothes for dusting, lest the glaze be scratched. Her own dress, which can only be touched with properly powdered gloves, for the oils of one’s bare fingers would leave marks. “That would be a change.”

“It’ll let you mix with people who don’t care about the Whittemores,” Scott presses, and when Lydia looks at him this time, he meets her gaze even as his voice falters. “I think it’ll be good for you.”

“I suppose you would,” Lydia says, and smiles again as Allison bridles to Scott’s defense. “But of course you forget that I’ve nothing but this house. I’d hardly be prepared.”

“Oh, we can lend you anything you need,” Scott says.

And then he stops, puzzled, as Allison presses forward. His bemused, worried eyes stay on her face, and pay no attention as her hands reach out and clasp one of Lydia’s between them. “Do come,” Allison says. “I know you miss your old family home—”

Scott sucks in his breath. Even he isn’t so dense as to think Lydia _misses_ the property that has been in her family for generations, the over-generous dowry she brought to the altar and allowed Jackson to mismanage to a ruin that he didn’t even _want_ , save for the money the land would bring him at auction. That nevertheless he kept solely by virtue of the fact that when their marriage fell apart, he was the one who was born a man.

“Don’t tell me you’ll make me forget it,” Lydia says, quiet and cold. She doesn’t miss the place. She _accounts_ for it, every morning when she wakes and every night when she lays her head on her pillow. She tots up the numbers and reckons the total.

“No, you won’t.” Allison’s tone is—strange. For a moment her eyes harden and Lydia almost believes the woman angry, and at _Lydia_. And when she smiles and they soften, the air around her is still more meaningful than simple pity. “But things are different in the country. The people are different. You might run into somebody who could—” 

“Help?” Lydia says scornfully.

And again, Allison presses beyond the boundaries of social pleasantries. Her hands squeeze Lydia’s fingers between them till Lydia has to force herself to not flinch. She catches her lip between her teeth for a moment, not coquettish, merely indecisive, and then she draws a breath and looses Lydia’s hand, and straightens up. “Somebody who could speak knowledgeably about what could be done,” she finally says. “It’s an ancient area of the country, you know, with its own customs. Or you might not—I’m not sure how much time you spent off your estate, when your family used it? But at any rate, Lydia, there might still be a way.”

“I did consult the best lawyer in this city, and the law here is the same as the law there,” Lydia says, but she’s cutting by instinct, not by deliberation. Allison’s manner, her phrasing—the way that Scott looks at her with sudden, almost pained understanding. Perhaps it’s the weeks Lydia has rotted in this house while her estranged husband could roam at will, with no more than a sneer from the righteous, but she finds herself interested. “The most expensive, at least.”

“I know, but I think there’s a difference between what the laws say and what can be done. And in the city the way things are done looks different,” Allison says. She presses her lips together, hesitating, and then drops her head slightly as Scott puts one hand on her shoulder. “Come visit, at least. Even if you don’t hunt.”

“We’ll make sure you have company,” Scott echoes. “Good—well, company you do want to speak to, at least.”

Lydia considers them, and then her withering social calendar. “Very well,” she says. “I’ll come. And you’ll introduce me to these _knowledgeable_ people.”

Allison smiles at her, but it’s tinged as much with uncertainty as relief. It’s the smile of someone who suddenly wonders if she’s made a bad situation worse. And beside her, her husband hastily applies the smile of someone who believes he might be watching a dear friend head off into tragedy.

As if he and Lydia have ever been friends. “I don’t think it was fair at all, what he did,” Scott adds. “But…Lydia…you know you’re in the right. You know that, and everybody who knows the real story, knows that too.”

“Yes, the truth is such a dear comfort,” Lydia says, and then rings for the maid to see when about the kitchen is going to bother interrupting the moral lectures. “I suppose company might make it more bearable.”

“We’ll do our best to make that true for you,” Allison says. “Just come and we’ll do the rest.”

Lydia inclines her head, marking the promise. “I shall certainly see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not really trying to root out all anachronisms with this one, and it's very much Hollywood History. Specifically, inspired by my watching [The Handmaiden](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4016934/) recently.


	2. Chapter 2

He’s one of those wild young types, throwing aside any sense of decency and cleanliness in hopes that unburdening himself of those will leave room for inspiration. Less of the artistic type, more of the naturalist or engineering, to judge by the nature of the stains on his knees and elbows, but at the end of the day they’re all of the same obsessive, impractical, overly ambitious bent. Or so Lydia judges, when this Lord Stilinski raises such a racket in the stables below her window with his midnight arrival that she goes down to lodge her protest, only to have him laugh and dribble blood on the hem of her dressing-gown.

“Hunting at this hour?” Lydia says, standing outside of the library where the man’s taken himself. “Or has that fool cut himself wherever he’s been drinking?”

Allison, freshly arrived herself, finishes instructing a pair of servants as to readying Lord Stilinski’s rooms. She’s careful to dismiss them, and to watch them retreat out of earshot, before she turns to Lydia. “Not hunting. He told us he’d be late from a lodge meeting.”

“Oh, Masonic nonsense?” Lydia says, regarding her stained dressing gown with distaste. Her arm is tiring of holding the hem away from her so that the stain won’t seep through to her nightgown. “As far as I can tell, that neither advanced Jackson’s knowledge nor his ability to find competent people with whom to do business. The money would’ve been better spent donated directly to his lodge’s winecellar.”

The light coming out from under the library door is a blazing yellow, and Lydia can hear a great fire starting to crackle away inside. Footsteps move about, a restless, quick tread, and a shadow occasionally passes beneath the door. And then, just as Lydia finishes speaking, the light goes _red_.

It’s only for a moment, and is yellow again before she can be sure of herself. Perhaps Lord Stilinski passed very close by the door and in doing so, blocked more of the light—but it seemed no less bright for its redness.

“No,” Allison says, very softly. “Not a Mason. It’s—it’s called the Hellfire Club.”

Lydia suppresses a sigh. “Well, I’ll admit that’s more risqué that I gave either you or Scott credit for. And Jackson certainly never had the courage to ever follow up on his boasts and actually dare one of those idiotic men’s drinking clubs, but—”

“No,” Allison says. She presses her lips together and looks past Lydia, who turns, half-expecting a hovering husband. But no, all that occupies Allison’s gaze is one of the portraits in the hall: her parents and herself, when she was about eight or so, if Lydia accurately remembers what Scott had said earlier. “No. It’s the first one. The _old_ one. Not a men’s club—anyone can attend, if they agree to the rules.”

“Have you?” Lydia says, looking back at Allison.

The woman flinches. And then, for the briefest of moments, is truly, deeply furious with Lydia. She catches herself when Lydia recoils, but doesn’t apologize beyond a slow, strangely amused smile. “No. But my father—you know, when my grandfather threatened to have him tried for a murder that terrible old man was responsible for…and I was so young, with my mother dead, I would’ve had to go to my grandfather’s care…he joined.”

“I didn’t know,” Lydia says after a long silence. She finds herself unusually reluctant to go on, in light of how Allison is smiling. But in the end, she refuses to believe herself any less resilient than the other woman; the last time Scott went off on a heroic mission to seize some dangerous criminal, despite there being _constables_ for that, Allison had promptly fainted upon his safe return. And after she’d gone through the trouble of leading her own search party after him—the least she could have done was stay awake for the denouement. “You never mentioned a murder. And I thought you said he went to the continent, for his business interests.”

Allison ceases to smile. She lifts her hand, and Lydia is unsure as to whether the woman means to clasp Lydia’s shoulder or touch her cheek. At any rate, Allison eventually lowers the hand without doing either.

“If you want your house back,” she tells Lydia. “Your family’s place. You should talk to him. He can get it for you. But you should…you should remember, he’ll get it for you the way he wants to do it. I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t warn you that you might not like how he does it. And you’ll pay for it in more than money.”

“Is this my introduction?” Lydia says, lifting her brows. “Shadow tricks and something out of a penny dreadful?”

“I’m only telling you that he can do it, and what that means,” Allison says, her mouth firming slightly. “My father joined, and he still thinks it was worth it. It might not have been _right_ , according to—to people who have never had to worry about anything. But it worked, and I’m glad it worked.”

Blackmail and debauchery at its best, and at its worst, the kind of threat that Lydia wasted years of her life trying to make Jackson understand he _couldn’t_ fall into, not if he wanted them to live with only social disapproval hanging over their head. And yet Lydia looks at the door. She doesn’t want for money. She can survive. She may even thrive.

She thinks of her twice-daily accounting of all that she’s—not lost. She hasn’t lost a single thing. It’s all been _taken_. “Are we friends?” she asks Allison.

“Scott and Stiles are friends,” Allison tells her instead. For a second Allison looks puzzled, as if reciting a formula in which she’s been drilled but that she doesn’t grasp. And then she shakes her head, and holds up her hand before Lydia can repeat the question. “If we weren’t friends, I wouldn’t have asked you to come. You would’ve come across Stiles sooner or later, looking for a way. It might help that you’re coming across him here, so that’s why I invited you.”

“Well,” Lydia says, and then she strips off the bloody dressing-gown. She glances at the bloodstained hem, then folds it over her arm, careful to keep the drip off her feet. “That is very kind of you, and I will certainly remember the favor.”

“Never mind that,” Allison says. She hesitates, then moves as if to reach out to Lydia—and at the last second she steps around and goes on down the hall. She has an odd stiff slant to her stride, as if just keeping herself from turning. “You don’t owe me, Lydia. I just want you to remember Scott and I are trying to help you.”

“I will,” Lydia says. She watches the other woman leave, then lays her hand on the library door. 

Making her excuses ahead of time, Allison. It’s not necessary when the signs are so obvious that only a child could claim they needed a warning, but Lydia sees no need to call after the other woman and say so. After all, as Allison said herself, it’s not a matter of doing a favor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Masonic organizations were, all conspiracy theories aside, quite powerful networking groups at the time. As for the Hellfire Club, several associations used that name at various points in history and they weren't all related to each other, or all that similar (aside from liking to defy what was socially acceptable).


	3. Chapter 3

The first interview is short. The library is very warm, and the air seems to gather in a prickling sweat on Lydia’s bare arms. She stands across the room from the roaring fire in the hearth and still feels as if her flimsy nightgown might catch flame at any second. But her breasts are high and firm and round against the gown, and the light turns her arms to gold and her hair to molten copper, and she knows what kind of fire the curves of her lips can provoke.

Stiles laughs at her.

“Oh,” he says, his lanky, almost disjointed-looking limbs fumbling up against the table edge. He drops his scalpel into the half-skinned stoat lying in front of him, then laughs awkwardly. His hand goes up and nearly smears blood into his disheveled hair before he catches himself. He _seems_ young, with the awkward ways and the freckles flecking his cheeks, but the way he laughs at her isn’t. It’s too pitying to be. “Oh, listen, I don’t think anybody told you. I don’t trade.”

“I’m not _trade_ ,” Lydia says icily.

And he laughs again. Quietly, his hands falling to his sides, the shadows turning the blood on them to something thick and black, something that seems to creep up his arms when she stares too long. “Didn’t say that, said _I_ don’t trade. Besides, it’s just land. It’s not like there aren’t other pieces of property lying around.”

Lydia draws in her breath, deliberately.

His eyes sharpen. He shakes his head, still smiling, and puts his hands down on either side of the stoat and leans over the table, and suddenly it is so very quiet, as if they’re standing in a tomb. Or somewhere else—the firelight still plays around Lydia but she is unaccountably afraid to look to either side, or even away from his face, lest she…and then she doesn’t know. Why she would expect to see anything but the library around them, with those bright reds and yellows licking up the spines of the books.

“Do you need a trophy?” he says. “ _You_? Really?”

Anger gives Lydia an extra bolt of iron in her spine. Just another man, she reminds herself, the same high tone from all of them. “You speak from experience,” she says, with a nod to the stoat.

He glances down and then grins at her. It’s shy, boyish, almost charming but for the fact that he moves one hand and pointedly strokes the flayed portion of the stoat. His fingers are surprisingly pale, almost as pale as hers, and look like bone against the rich pink meat. “Oh, this isn’t a trophy either. I just try to use what I catch. It’s a waste otherwise,” he says. Then he tilts his head. “I just don’t think you should waste anything. And it would be, you know. What you’re thinking right now.”

Before Lydia can reply, Lord Stilinski lifts his hand from the stoat. He turns and draws out a handkerchief at the same time, and wipes his fingers as he crosses the room to the doors. He still smears blood on the handle when he opens one for her.

Lydia keeps her head high as she leaves the room. She could press him, he doesn’t have the air of a man who would insist, not yet—but she came to negotiate, not to beg. So she leaves, and as she does, a manservant approaches with a platter of food and a pot of coffee. He draws back nervously from her, bowing his head, and at her back Lydia senses a change of interest. She has to turn anyway, to return to her rooms, and as she does, she glimpses Lord Stilinski’s contemplative expression. The manservant is handsome, with broad shoulders and dark hair that threatens to slip out of its severe style into curls at the temples.

She walks on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taxidermy was a common hobby back in Victorian times, and has been rediscovered by hipsters today.


	4. Chapter 4

As expected, Peter Hale is in the thick of the gambling salon, the center of action at the table with the highest heap of chips on it, calling out the most daring plays, dropping the wittiest quips, garnering the attention of the ladies with the most dubious claims to virtue in the place. He looks to be in fine fettle, with his coat thrown open to display the thickly-gilded brocade of his waistcoat, the heavy gold watch-chain, and when the house finally declares the bank broken for the night and stops the play, he takes a rough handful of his winnings and leaves the rest to the frantic hangers-on to fight over with the dealer, scornfully tossing his head.

“A more conservative occupation than you used to prefer,” Lydia says to him, over the drinks she pays for. “Looking after someone else’s interests, and quite faithfully. The manager here must be pleased, with the sheer volume of the dupes you suck into their coffers.”

The salon isn’t quite emptied and Peter stiffens, his eyes flicking to the backs of the last departing players. Then he smiles at her, part-respectful, part-poisonous. “I don’t recall that security was ever _not_ an interest of mine, Madam Whittemore. After all, when we last spoke, it was over the matter of your husband carelessly neglecting to legally secure his interest in a mutual investment.”

“An investment that wasn’t any more substantial than my husband’s loyalty, so in the end I suppose all you had out of it was a little breathing space with your creditors,” Lydia says. She sits patiently as Peter’s brows rise and then as Peter’s smile smooths, as he adjusts his drink out of the way and leans towards her.

He is still as charming as he was when he’d convinced Jackson to sink a fortune into an alleged coal mine, and still as patently rapacious about it as when, regrettably, Lydia had mistaken that for mere cleverness and had presumed she could shortsell him first. Peter Hale is a very attractive man, with full awareness of that fact. And a very desperate one, for as long as Lydia has known of him—never quite able to reap the full potential of his bets before he had to flee onwards. His creditors are numerous, and the vast majority of them are looking for repayment over and above mere money.

“I did hear the news,” he says, as his fingers stray nearer towards her gloved hand. “Come to celebrate, I hope. He never did figure enough to merit sorrow.”

She curls her fingers in on themselves, and smiles tightly as he offers her an amused, unsurprised tip of the head. “Come to clear your debt—only here, and don’t bother to try and calculate a mark-up. I’ve already spoken to the manager and inspected their books. I know what the number should be.”

He’s startled, and more genuinely than before. He sits and regards her for several seconds. A smile lingers on his lips but it hangs there like a mask on the wall, without thought.

“His family did an excellent job keeping it out of the papers,” he finally says, and then picks up and sips at his drink. “Whatever he did to you. Very well, you’ve done me the honor of being direct and I never like to leave a favor unreturned. What’s the price for this generosity?”

“I want you to be friendly with an acquaintance. A man.” Lydia watches Peter’s face and doesn’t detect anything except an expectation that she’ll provide more details. “He’s a member of an exclusive club that I’ve been denied entry to. One of the Hellfire Clubs—apparently the first of them. They do accept women, so I’d like to know why and whether their opinion could be swayed.”

The faintest shadow of disappointment enters Peter’s eyes. “Your interests have changed, I see. How commonplace.”

“I am not asking you to inquire after _my_ interests,” Lydia says sharply. “Mind your own.”

“Ah, well,” Peter says, and lifts his glass to her in a toast. When she doesn’t reciprocate, he shakes his head, chuckling, and drains the glass anyway. “I do seem to be lacking other employment, and no doubt it’ll keep me busy. Perhaps it’ll even offer a challenge. I am _sadly_ lacking in those.”

Lydia rises from her seat, leaving her drink untouched. “I’ll send for you,” she says. “Dress for the country, and do _not_ expect me to pay for the wardrobe, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was and still is common for gambling places to secretly pay players to drive up the betting of other, unsuspecting players, so that ultimately the house's take is bigger.
> 
> Scams for investments in exploitable natural resources were pretty popular in the Victorian age.


	5. Chapter 5

Jackson escorts a beautiful brunette heiress up and down the most popular promenade in the city, and Lydia joins the McCalls for another week of hunting. She prevails upon them to invite Peter too, as an old friend of the family, and arranges her arrival so that she will be there a day before he is.

“Oh, you’ve come up again,” Lord Stilinski says the evening of her arrival, stumbling out of the library, Peter smiling genially over his shoulder at Lydia. They’re both coat-less, and the collar of Lord Stilinski’s shirt is pulled part to show an ink-stain trailing along his throat and down onto a haphazardly-exposed collarbone. “Scott was wondering if he should scale back on the hunting. They do dances, too. And music. And I think there’s a playacting troupe wandering around the neighborhood somewhere, if that’s more to your tastes.”

“I am quite satisfied with the quail, but I appreciate your inquiring,” Lydia says. She ignores Peter, and averts her eyes when he casually whisks out a handkerchief and begins to daub it at Lord Stilinski’s neck. “You’re not a local?”

Lord Stilinski raises an absent hand to brush Peter away, then startles, as if he’d only just realized that it was another person wiping at him. He flushes and tugs at his collar, like any another young man deep into a foolish flirtation, and Peter hums and turns politely away, folding up his handkerchief with a slight, tolerant smile playing over his face.

“No, I stay in the neighborhood,” Lord Stilinski says. He scruffs at the side of his head, and drags a bit of the remaining ink up over his jaw. The sticky dark swoop gives it a sharp hook, so sharp that when he jerks his head, Lydia stiffens from the half-imagined cut of it. “Why don’t you just buy it from him?”

“I beg your pardon?” Lydia says curtly.

Peter’s head rises. He still looks at his hands, playing at politeness, but he has the cocked stance of a stalking fox—and all the subtlety of a street-hawker. But for once he’s overshadowed, as Lord Stilinski laughs and flicks his fingers at the wing of his collar and then tosses his body into a slouch against the library doorway. He’s taller than he lets on, with his gangling ways, but he has a shade of height on Peter.

“Just buy it back,” Lord Stilinski says. Casually, mildly, with the thought of one discussing a purchase of a trinket. “You could get a loan. Allison’s got the fortune now, and even if she didn’t think it’d be immoral, I don’t think Scott would let her charge interest. They probably wouldn’t even want you to pay them back right—”

“If I were in _need_ of a loan,” Lydia says, and then she catches her breath. Not because she’s in need of it, but because she can feel it pressing up in her, can feel the strain in her fingers where she is holding them flat and straight against her skirts. She catches it before it can run from her. “I certainly know better than to seek a friend. And I wouldn’t discuss it—”

“Oh, right.” Lord Stilinski winces and then pushes off the doorway. He’s near her for a moment, too near for good breeding, and yet the clumsiness of it removes all menace from the action. “Sorry. My fault, entirely. I’m too used to where everyone’s always been in each other’s—anyway, this is—”

Peter half-turns to face her. It puts him no closer, and yet the mere curl of his voice, insinuating as it is, prickles Lydia’s skin. “I don’t think you should worry about me, Stiles. Lydia and I, we’re familiar with each other. For quite some time. Aren’t we, my dear?”

Lydia just stops her tongue from lashing out with a lesson on familiarity. She has, in fact, claimed the man as a close acquaintance; she would have preferred nearly any other story, but friendship can be manufactured with far less paperwork than any sort of business relation. Instead she limits herself to a tight smile and a small brush of her hand over her skirt, smoothing them away from him. “Yes, Mr. Hale and I need no introductions. In fact, I meant to make one to you, but I see he’s already found you.”

“You were?” Lord Stilinski says. His eyes widen, but then he turns to Peter too quickly for Lydia to determine whether the cause is surprise or amusement or alarm. His tone, however—that and the way he claps his hand to Peter’s shoulder, it soothes the sudden warning look from Peter’s face. “You must have taken less offense than I thought. The last time I saw you, I didn’t think you liked me much.”

“Oh, no, she did take offense. Lydia’s always been quite the stickler for proper behavior,” Peter says warmly. He’s still turned towards Lydia and to speak to the other man, he has to cant his chin coyly back over his shoulder, nearly grazing the back of Lord Stilinski’s hand. “Which interested me, of course. Who would dare be so rude?”

It’s cool in the hallway, but hardly wintry. It certainly doesn’t justify the shiver that passes through Lord Stilinski, or the nervous way he hastily withdraws his hand from under Peter’s breath, with a half-guilty, sidelong look towards Lydia. “I wasn’t very nice, I suppose. Didn’t really let you try,” he says. His eyes pass to Lydia again. “And we didn’t even talk about the rules—but anyway, if you want to talk about it, we can. I just don’t think you need to.”

Lydia considers reminding him that Peter is still listening, and quite avidly. She considers reminding Peter that, no matter what gambit he thinks he can run on his own behalf, he still hasn’t attended to the one she’s paid him for, and she is a much more faithful creditor than the others he’s slipped from over the years. That fool of a husband of hers had lost their money but she still has Peter’s signature on shares locked safely away—not worth the price of the paper, but priceless for being one of the few pieces of evidence in existence against him. She doesn’t hunt but she knows very well the manner of it.

She knows, she reminds himself, and smiles as charmingly as she can at Lord Stilinski. “I don’t need to pay for what is rightfully mine,” she tells him.

“No, but it’s just money, and it’s easier,” he says, frowning, as if teaching a child that between A and C come B.

“But it’s _mine_ ,” Lydia says. Then stops herself. She hadn’t meant to be so insistent.

Lord Stilinski draws back and she thinks she’s alarmed him. But then he grins at her, so likably that beside him, Peter’s lips twist in irritation.

“Never mind. You know the rules,” Lord Stilinski says.

Then he turns away, suddenly chattering away with Peter about some sort of planetary conjunction and a telescope and the roof here. Peter’s quick to take advantage, slipping his arm about Lord Stilinski’s shoulder and smiling back at Lydia, then turning that smile upon the other man as he guides them down the hall.

Lydia is not clear, at that moment, whether Lord Stilinski’s last words were meant as a question or as an instruction. She stands there, indecisive and fuming in it, until a servant timidly calls to her. She has an urgent message from the city, by way of private courier.


	6. Chapter 6

“Take it back, would you? It’s yours anyway. It was yours before we married and it’s always been yours, you never even liked me to visit it without you.” Jackson has always been an impatient man, and one who mistook shows of mere physical action for the air of command, but when they meet in his lawyer’s office, he is near-frenzied. He stalks up and down the side of the room, throwing her looks that range from anxious to angry. “You wanted it before, why do you always have to change your mind right when I’ve given in? You always—”

“If you wish to discuss our lack of suitability for each other, you may do it to the wallpaper,” Lydia informs him, with her hat and cloak still on. She glances to the lawyer, who is attempting to mimic a statue behind his fort of a desk, and then at her…husband. They are still married, as far as the law is concerned. “I have thoroughly studied the subject, and I can assure you, anything you say on it would not be new.”

“Lydia, please, just one, can’t you just—” Then Jackson breaks off. He twists his head aside in anguish and then lowers it to sheath his face in his hand.

She studies him. Overwrought, yes, but at the core there is a palpable desperation that she doesn’t remember from their prior arguments. Jackson has always needed a public element to his displays, but to gratify his ego; he’s never given the impression of caring much whether his audience recognized the true gravity of a situation, so long as they affirmed the gravity that he was giving to it.

“You need to take it,” he finally says. When he drags his hand down, his fingernails leave pale furrows, not quite scratches, that do not immediately fade. He is far too vain to ever harm himself. Once he smashed his hand against the wall to make a point, only to miss and strike a mirror, and the shock of a sliced knuckle had quieted him so thoroughly he never brought up that particular matter again. “You have to take it. Tell her, Dan.”

Lydia holds up her hand before the lawyer can speak. She pauses to remove her hat, and then pulls the cloak from around her shoulders and folds it over her arm. Then she looks up at her quivering, sweaty-faced husband. “What have you done?”

Jackson’s eyes widen. The gorge of his throat bobs violently and in spite of herself, Lydia steps swiftly to the side; equally alarmed, the lawyer begins to make his way from behind the desk. But Jackson pulls himself back, and then shows a flicker of his old self in the way that he peremptorily waves off the very man he’d called upon to do his dirty work for him. He coughs into his fist—his shoulders heave sharply enough that Lydia readies her cloak to fend off any mess—and then turns back with a hideously pathetic expression on his face.

“It’s all gone anyway, Lydia,” he says, his smile as artificial as those carved into the gibbering jesters who caper behind a cathedral’s saints. “By the time the damn army’s finished going through it, the only living things who’ll touch the place are the lepers and the rats. You won’t be able to grow anything on it.”

“We’ve been offered some amount of compensation from the government,” the lawyer says quickly, running over the heels of Jackson’s words. “Of course it’s based on their assessment of property value and we will not have any chance to contest that, but on the balance—”

Lydia feels her hat collapse under her grip. It’s an expensive piece of millinery, and one of the few whose shape is classic enough that it could conceivably be updated with little extra cost for later seasons. She thinks her restraint shows in that she hasn’t rolled it up and speared it down Jackson’s throat. “What. Have. You. _Done_?”

“Nothing!” Jackson wheels on her, fists thrust down to either side of himself, his lips drawing back into an almost-familiar sneer. But it’s the dullness of his eyes that takes away any ferocity, leaves him a mere actor of himself. “Nothing, damn it, not a—I didn’t even go out there, hadn’t gotten around to it, and next thing I know, I’ve a letter saying they’ve burnt the crops and are condemning the livestock, and then the damnable mayor’s writing about what to do about all the homeless farmers, as if _he_ shouldn’t know, and—”

“We had no choice but to cooperate once the slaughter and quarantine order went out,” the lawyer interrupts again. He pauses, looking between Jackson, who has retreated, rubbing his hands over his face, and Lydia. Then he extends a half-rolled sheaf to her.

The broken seal sheds little bits of red wax on the pale carpet as she takes it. She reads the plain, blunt text twice, running her fingertip along the neat, close script of some clerk, and then she carefully rolls the paper back up.

“You should take it back. It’s not worth a thing now, you’re the only one who’d want it,” Jackson says. He coughs into his hand, then shakes his head as if he’s suddenly found the joke in the situation. “It’s the cheapest you’ll ever get it, Lydia. You always knew a good deal when you saw one, so don’t tell me you don’t see that now.”

“I do,” Lydia says. Slowly, drawing out the two words as she gazes around the room. It’s the lawyer’s office, she remembers—vaguely, as if that fact were something she had been told when she was very young.

She doesn’t mind the lawyer, she thinks, and then she sees the coat and hat hanging on the wall. Lydia sets her own hat and cloak aside, carefully smoothing the cloak over the top of the chair, and then goes and takes down Jackson’s things. She drops them on the floor before her, then treads over them, careful to grind in her heels—Jackson lets out an exclamation but chokes halfway through it—to the liquor cabinet.

The cabinet is unlocked, and one of the bottles within has a fresh wet trail down the side of it, which is no doubt the source of what little color there is in Jackson’s face. She ignores it and draws out a different bottle, a port so rich it pours onto Jackson’s coat like caramel, pooling thickly amongst the folds before it sinks into the cloth.

A little is left in the bottle when she reaches the end of the coat. She steps over the puddles to keep her shoes clean and dry, and hands the bottle to her staring husband as she passes him and goes to the desk. The lawyer is slow to respond, pursing his lips as if he means to speak first, but once she’s plucked the pen from the inkwell, he sighs and goes to join her. He holds the deed of transfer by the corners as she signs, and then signs himself on the line left for a witness.

“I didn’t even _try_ to do it,” Jackson throws at her. It’s a poor hiss, his head barely coming up. “They told me when the fields were already burning.”

“No, I believe you,” Lydia says, taking up her cloak and hat again. “You wouldn’t be able to do something like this if you tried.”

“Lydia—”

She shuts the door on his rising voice. From behind it come two quick stamps, closing in on the door, and then nothing but muffled chatter. Eventually she makes out the lawyer’s voice asking Jackson to sit down and finish his drink. As always, she thinks, and slips her ruined hat under her cloak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sort of had in mind foot and mouth disease, which usually requires slaughtering all infected animals to bring it under control, it's so contagious. And which can be transmitted to people, although it's rare--but was more likely to happen back in Victorian times, before they had modern food safety controls.


	7. Chapter 7

“I’m a married woman and _you_ are a man who I doubt has ever even laid eyes on virtue,” Lydia spits.

“You’re a fool chasing a good name in the sight of your inferiors, just like all the rest of them,” Peter tells her, while yanking off his coat. He drops that carelessly in the middle of the hall, completely ignoring the belated lunge by the uncertainly-hovering maid, and then draws himself up short, staring at Lydia.

No, past her, although Lydia’s already tugged her dressing-gown tightly over her breasts. Peter’s eyes are strange, almost dazed but for the too-bright light in them. He’s come in a hurry, dried and drying layers of mud splashed up past his boots onto his knees, and his hair is a soaked tangle, a snarl that hangs limply at his temples and straggles onto the back of his neck as he snorts and spins on his heel. It has not been raining in the city this night, but then, he was still supposed to be at the McCall estate. The hunt has another two days to run.

Peter stalks into the drawing room, turning a shoulder to the maid’s shrill attempt to call him back. The maid gapes at his back, clutching his coat to herself, and then looks nervously up at Lydia as she descends.

“No, don’t,” Lydia says to the maid’s inquiry about rousing the butler or lone footman. “Go boil up some coffee. And do remember to _knock_ when you bring it.”

The maid curtseys in a flustered fright and then flees towards the kitchen. Lydia watches her go, and then straightens as from outside comes the clear ring of a horse’s hoof: the coach that had brought Peter.

“Whose team is that?” she asks when she steps into the room. “That isn’t the McCalls’ four-in-hand, and I refuse to believe that you can afford—”

Peter chuckles viciously into the glass of brandy he’s poured himself. He isn’t sitting, as Lydia thinks at first; he’s stooped so low over the table that his knees jar its underside when he glances at her, but the nearest chair is still a good yard from him. He’s shaking from the night chill and a drop of water runs off his jaw into his glass before he tosses it back, his eyes fixed on her.

“You,” he says, his tone as deliberate as his hand is unsteady. He points the empty glass at her. “You don’t know what you’ve done. You think you’re as wise as—think you’ve learned the better of everyone, well, you don’t have the slightest idea what you’ve stirred up. Even I—even when I was—at least _I_ knew better than to call on some houses, even when I had my family to stand with me.”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’ve done, I will agree to that,” Lydia says. She looks for the red rims in his eyes, for the smears on his fingertips, for the drunkard’s flush along his throat.

But he has none of those. His eyes are, if anything, _too_ clear, shading closer to madness than to any sort of drug, and his hands are clean. His face is ashen, a sickly pale that she can never remember seeing on him before. He stands there and stares at her, absently tugging at his already-torn shirt-collar, and the press of his fingers temporarily puts color into his skin, but the marks are so violently red that she almost takes them for signs of a beating, before remembering she’s watched them come about right then and there.

“Are you referring to Lord Stilinski?” Lydia finally asks.

Peter flinches sharply. His hand goes up and back and rakes through his hair, leaving it bunched in a waving draggle to one side. Then he takes a step back and drops heavily into the chair. He pours himself a fresh glass without looking away from her.

“This club,” he says. “Did you even know what it was about, before you started inquiring about rules and membership and all that nonsense?”

“Allison Argent’s father is a current member,” Lydia says. She forces back the impulse to shiver herself; it’s cold in the room, but she would be a fool if she called back the maid to light the hearth.

Instead she goes to the sideboard and lights a candelabra’s worth of candles, though the room is not particularly dark. Outside the moon is full and heavy and low-hanging, a true hunter’s moon. The brightness of its light seems to dim the candlelight by comparison, and as the wicks flare to life, gaunt shadows stray over Peter’s face where the moonlight had gilded him smooth.

“Oh, the _Argents_ ,” Peter says with an unpleasant laugh. He lifts his glass to Lydia in a mockery of a toast, but still doesn’t drink. “And here I thought you were a clever woman. You didn’t really think that Christopher went off to make his living on the continent, did you? And hasn’t set foot in England since, while his dear lone chick had to fend for both herself and for that idiot McCall? Did you think the wolves held off the pair of them because of those jaunts with the constables McCall goes on? Did you truly never hear about the _graveyards_ on the Argent estate?”

“What are you saying?” Lydia takes the candelabra with her when she crosses the room to stand before Peter. Its harsh yellow light picks out a faint stain on his loosened waistcoat, centered about a button on the verge of falling off. Or perhaps it’s not a stain but a burn—the brocade there is muddied and faintly indented, as if molded to whatever had soiled it. She fancies for a second that it looks like a handprint. “Stop talking in riddles. If you’ve offended Lord Stilinski or jeopardized my standing with—”

Peter’s eyes harden. “To hell with your standing,” he says coolly. He lifts his glass, pauses, and then drains half of it. Then he lowers it, and not once did his eyes blink or stray from hers. “If you’d give a damn about that, you wouldn’t have even considered a so-called Hellfire Club, let alone called on me. What you gave a damn about was vengeance, plain and simple. And if you’d admitted that, perhaps I could’ve helped you and neither of us would be troubled at this hour.”

“I see that you are, but I do not see, at this point, any trouble for myself beyond your inappropriate presence here,” Lydia says. She tempers the sharpness of her tone to cut and not stab. “You’re wasting my time. In fact, Peter, it may interest you to know that I no longer need to call on your services. What little that you provided in the first place.”

His lip curls and he jerks down the glass. But then he seems to think the better of anger, and cups both hands about the half-empty glass as he shakes his head, gives her a grim smile. “Oh, you _have_ been a fool, my dear,” he says. “You asked me to find out why they rejected you, when you never even asked in the first place whether they _had_.”

“I asked you,” Lydia starts, and then she falters. She cannot afford to believe Peter, and yet there is something peculiarly sincere about his wildness. How—how _artless_ it is. “The rules. You were supposed to—”

“The rules are for members, they don’t apply to anyone else,” Peter says, contempt cooling his gaze again. “You need to follow them to stay a member, but not to join, you pretty little fool. For that all you need is to ask, and for them to say yes. And you didn’t stop to listen—”

She suddenly remembers her first meeting with Lord Stilinski. “No, I did. He said it would be a waste. What I—the way I wanted it done.”

“Scandal and bankruptcy for that husband of yours?” Peter mutters, glancing down at his glass.

“No. No. I only wanted him to give my land back to me, without my having to pay again for it,” Lydia says. She pauses. Her eyes land on the bottle in Peter’s hand and for a second she contemplates it. “But in hindsight, I think I did want him to beg me for it, too.”

Peter’s eyes flick to her. His knees jerk and she moves back, thinking he means to stand, but instead he merely shifts in his seat and then finishes the rest of his brandy in a hoarse gulp. When he’s done, he puts the glass on one trembling knee. “Why did you think of me, when you decided to go to him?” he suddenly asks. “You hate me, of course, but I thought you wanted to forget me. Or have you been waiting for me to come and beg, too?”

He asks her in such a curious way, so devoid of emotion—it reminds her of a child asking about the meaning of a prayer. “I did want to forget you,” she says. She hesitates again, surprised at herself. “I didn’t think of you till after I’d talked to him the first time. I didn’t…want to remember you then, but it was only that I thought you’d be at least a little good at it. I didn’t want just anyone who’d—who wouldn’t be noticed. That was the point. I needed somebody good enough that they would be. I’ve never expected you to beg, and wouldn’t believe you if you started now, Peter. I think I’ve only ever just expected you to be…better. But you’re always a little disappointing.”

“Better,” Peter repeats. He rolls the glass in his hand, then dips his head and laughs hollowly. “Better. Oh…you know, Lydia, I am sorry I started with your husband. That was a mistake for me. I will admit that that, it was, and if I could do it again, I would have never bothered with him, and would have—”

There’s a knock at the door. Peter starts and then curses as his knee jars into the glass and sends it tumbling from his hand onto the rug. He leans forward to grope for it and Lydia turns away from him, calling to her maid that she’ll be there in a moment.

“The rules you wanted to know about,” Peter says behind her, his voice soft and still regretful. “It’s not a political club, or a business association, or anything mundane like that. They take a longer view—they expect a longer commitment. It’s no ordinary debt you’re banking against, Lydia. They’re outside of the normal affairs of the world.”

“You would be an expert on such matters,” Lydia says. She sets the candelabra aside and then lays her hand on the door handle. “Well, you still have your own debt to me, and it’s first in time. I hope you remembered that, with whatever you promised Lord Stilinski.”

Peter laughs again, much more sharply. The sound seems to ricochet about the room in increasingly higher echoes and Lydia can hear the maid’s frightened whimper through the door. She looks over her shoulder, but Peter has his head down between his hands, his fingers squeezing the dampness out from the hair over his temples. 

Lydia bites her tongue on a reprimand and quickly opens the door and steps out into the hall, then closes it before the maid can see within. She takes the coffeepot, thinking to handle the matter by simply dismissing the woman, but the maid is so rattled that she draws Lydia halfway down the hall, urging her to lock the door and let the maid call for the constables to take away Peter. As if that would mend Lydia’s reputation, when in the morning the neighborhood will already be buzzing about a late-night call from a strange gentleman.

In the end, Lydia sends the woman back to bed, with the threat of dismissal with bad references if she speaks a word of it to anyone. By the time Lydia returns to the drawing room, the coffeepot is no longer issuing steam.

And the room is empty. The used glass is sitting on the table, and next to it, the chair still bears the imprint where Peter had sat. Crusts of mud dot the rug. Lydia puts her hand down on the table and touches drops of water left from Peter’s hair. But the man himself is gone, and when she goes and checks herself, since the maid has been banished, so is his coat.

There is a note. Carelessly left stuck between the jamb and the front door, so that Lydia is fortunate to have noticed it before the staff rose in the morning. The paper only says that Peter’s returning to the McCall estate and that Allison asked whether Lydia would be as well.

Lydia looks at it for a while. The writing is in Peter’s hand—she even goes so far as to compare it to the other documents signed by him that she has. But the script is so bold and confident. It’s nothing like the shaken, almost unguarded man she’s just spoken to.

When she folds it up and burns it, she thinks for a moment that she smells something odd. Not sulfur or any such thing—something sweet that immediately fades away, like the dust from dried roses.

Lydia takes the glass Peter had used and breaks it, and mixes the shards with the household ashes. Then she leaves instructions for the staff to replace the rug, table, and chair in the drawing room.


	8. Chapter 8

Allison is surprised to see her. “We heard about what happened to your old family estate,” she explains, as her staff bustle in and out of the room they’re preparing for Lydia. “I am so sorry. If there’s anything that any of us can do—”

“Then I think the government will tell us. I’ve notified my lawyer and written to the manager—Jackson at least hadn’t had the time to replace any of the staff with his halfwitted lackeys,” Lydia says crisply. She allows the maids to take her luggage into the room and then allows Allison to suggest that she refresh herself after the long trip with a light tea. “And who was the news-bearer?”

The other woman’s stride breaks. Allison takes a deep breath before she answers. “Stiles mentioned it,” she says. She looks Lydia up and down, and then puts her hand on Lydia’s arm. “Lydia, when I told you to speak with him, I—”

“Made a suggestion. You hardly tell me to do anything, Allison,” Lydia says, looking Allison directly in the eyes. She holds the woman’s gaze till Allison flushes and looks away. “Jackson’s transferred the land back to me.”

“He has?” Allison says, looking up sharply. Then she excuses herself, telling Lydia that she’ll order up afternoon tea for both of them, as she is certain Lydia could use the sustenance after such a long journey.

It’s of little surprise to Lydia when Scott arrives instead of tea, and when he asks her whether he can be of any help, either with Jackson or with the quarantine on the family estate. They’ve stepped out onto the balcony; the maids are busy in the room behind them but to Lydia’s eye, none are paying the slightest bit of attention.

She turns and looks out over the back lawn. It’s unusually short, with the vast majority of the estate being dedicated to brush and forest suitable for hunting. A few of the other guests are out on it, taking the air—including Lord Stilinski, who has perched himself on a split-rail fence and is playing with something that has the glint of metal. Horseshoes, she realizes, as he twists the pair apart and then flicks one at a thick iron rod half-sunk into the ground several yards away.

“I can talk to him for you,” Scott says. When Lydia looks at him, genuinely surprised, he offers her a half-ashamed smile, as if he’s the one caught out. “He won’t deal with my friends if I ask him.”

“And how did you come by this arrangement?” Lydia says. She rests her hand on the balcony rail and finds to her disgust that she could use the support. “Courtesy of your father-in-law?”

Scott frowns and for a second Lydia thinks he might claim ignorance. He still strikes her as that type of innocent, and she would believe it in an instant if he told her he had no idea about his wife’s family’s entanglements.

“No, I was friends with Stiles a long time before his father met Allison’s father,” Scott says instead. His eyes go from Lydia to the lawn and his frown deepens. He turns and puts both hands on the rail, and she looks where he looks.

Peter is approaching Lord Stilinski. Bare-headed so Lydia can see his hair has returned to its usual styled perfection, and his wardrobe is equally immaculate, down to the precise way his rolled-up sleeves have their cuffs centered over the widest part of his forearm, emphasizing the flex of the muscle against the artist’s portfolio he carries. He offers Lord Stilinski the portfolio and Lord Stilinski slides off the fence and then takes it. When he opens it, Peter sidles up beside him and then looks up and directly at Lydia.

“I wish you’d said something about him,” Scott says. There’s a touch of a reprimand in his voice.

There is something of that in the way Peter smiles at Lydia, too, although Peter’s rebuke is far more practiced, and therefore Lydia discounts it accordingly. She still frowns at how carefree he seems, with his head high, his gestures flowing as he and Lord Stilinski discuss whatever is in the portfolio. “I assure you, Peter Hale isn’t a threat to anyone here,” Lydia says, arching her brows.

Peter’s smile widens and then he bows his head so that it nearly touches Lord Stilinski’s. His hand goes down into his pocket, then draws out something: a slip of paper, folded, that he wedges into a splinter coming off the fence-rail. Then he steps away from the fence, as he and Lord Stilinski move towards the house. Lord Stilinski absently tosses the remaining horseshoe over his shoulder and it comes down directly on the top of the rod, sending a sharp ringing noise across the lawn. The other guests startle—Peter does too, but almost instantly Lord Stilinski’s hand lands on his shoulder, pulling him back. Lydia can’t see Peter’s face now.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Scott says. He purses his lips, when Lydia looks over at him, then sighs. “I know when Stiles…he doesn’t involve himself with just anyone. I don’t know what your friend did, but—”

“Mr. Hale is an acquaintance of long standing, and that is not the same as a friend,” Lydia says.

“Well, still. If you’d said something. Even if he’s not your friend, I could have talked to Stiles about him.” But Scott is looking at her now, and with a surprising degree of understanding in his eyes. It is shaded through and through with sympathy and that is grating, but she would have expected blindness at best, deliberate ignorance at worst, and she sees neither in him. “Anyway, Stiles and I have always just been friends. If I talked to him about you, nothing would happen except that we’d talk.”

“You are, as always, a master of understatement.” Lydia watches Scott puzzle over whether to treat that as an insult or not and allows herself a thin smile. “Inadvertently.”

It doesn’t matter with him anyway; he’d always end up settling for an accepting smile, as he does now. “The offer is still on the table, Lydia.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t just gone ahead and done it,” Lydia says after a moment. She looks out onto the lawn again. Lord Stilinski and Peter are gone, but the note is still there, fluttering slightly in the breeze.

“Stiles asked me a long time ago not to act like that with him. Or with anyone who has something to do with him.” Scott pushes himself up against the rail, then releases it and steps back. He gives Lydia a half-sheepish, half-watchful glance. “It didn’t make sense to me back then, but as I’ve seen him and what happens, I—”

“Why are you friends with someone like that?” Lydia asks him. “If you do know. And I do think you do.”

A flicker of something hard goes through Scott’s eyes. Not directed at her, certainly, but it’s considerably closer to cynicism than she’s ever seen in him before. Even on his daredevil raids, his courage has always been of the shining white knight variety, not of the weary operator. “I know better than Allison,” Scott says, and then he chuckles a little as Lydia’s brows rise. “She hates that. Her father won’t tell her all of it—and I’ll tell her, but I’m not going to ask Stiles to show her, not the stranger things he does, and Stiles isn’t going to show her if he thinks it’ll make me uncomfortable.”

“Make you uncomfortable,” Lydia repeats slowly.

“We’re friends,” Scott says after a moment. He tilts his head. “I know it doesn’t seem—seem like me, but we’re friends. We always have been, and I…I don’t like everything that he does, but I know why he does it, and it’s not just because he can. Anyway, what he does…it doesn’t mean he doesn’t need friends. The two aren’t the same thing.”

“Generous of you,” Lydia says. She glances over her shoulder at the maids, and then beyond them, at the door opening: Allison returning with tea.

Scott inhales sharply, making her look back. “You have your family estate again. You’ve got what you want.”

“It wasn’t ever _not_ mine, Scott. That wasn’t the reason. Not really. It was just the…the vehicle.” Then Lydia reins in her temper. He’s still wrong about the nature of their relationship, but she likes him more now than she has ever before. “If I don’t ask you, are you going to ban me from your house? From speaking to Allison?”

“No.” The answer comes quick enough that Lydia believes him, even when he hisses regretfully afterward. He looks at her, then grimaces and turns away. When he looks at Allison then, he looks like a drowning man watching a rope fly towards him, and for once Lydia does not find it sickeningly affectionate of him. “No to both. But if you don’t—if you do this, Lydia…if you take up that invitation, you can’t ever change your mind. You’ll be one of them forever. Even if I asked him, you couldn’t. And I—I don’t think we—Allison told you everything you should know, and we should—”

“I never needed you to tell me something I could find out for myself,” Lydia says. She casts a last look at that bit of white stuck in the fence, then picks up her skirts and turns around. “Thank you, Scott. That was very thoughtful of you.”

Scott draws a breath, lifts his hand, and then falls back, an expression of mixed disappointment and worry on his face. And, strangely, amusement. “He said you’d say that.”

Lydia pauses. “Did he.”

“He likes you,” Scott says. He steps after Lydia, his hands in his pockets, an embarrassed little boy. “He doesn’t have to, you know. That’s not a requirement.”

“I see,” Lydia says, and then lifts her head. “Well. I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Horseshoes are a common folklore charm against evil. Small joke there.


	9. Chapter 9

The room is surprisingly tasteful. No velvet monstrosities, no gilding, and the leather is limited to upholstering, as it should be. It is an odd kind of leather, chamois the color of cream, with a slight stretch to it that makes the stuff cling to her fingers when she strokes it. Lydia hasn’t made up her mind whether she finds the sensation unpleasant or not.

“If it’s not to your liking,” Peter says, bending low over the sofa behind her, his breath riffling the hairs that have strayed from her chignon. He has his arm resting along the top of the sofa; she can feel the heat of it against the skin of her neck, can sense the occasional twitch of his fingertips just short of her shoulder. “You can say so. We can always find something else.”

Lydia turns her head, just till she can glimpse Peter’s face and the slight but assured smile gracing it. She waits till his hand is half-clasped about the bowl of her glass and then swirls it out from his fingers. Puts it to her lips and drains it of the wine.

A flicker of pique goes across his face, but it’s swiftly chased away from the stiff blankness that comes over him when Stiles, still across the room, snickers. He leans up but Stiles shakes his head and continues to putter about with the bottles on the table. Some are full, some half-full, some empty. Stiles plucks the cork from one and then presses it back in, then flicks it out again with his thumbnail.

“I always think these first meetings are the worst part of it,” he says to the bottle-tops. He runs his fingertip along the rim of another, causing it to issue out a soft moan, and then repeats the motion with a third bottle. This one is partly filled with some sort of liquid so the moan thins and rises. “It’s funny, you’d think it’d be worse when people are making up their mind. All that thinking about what could happen, what they _want_ to happen but what might happen to them, and they keep backing out, swearing they won’t, and it’s just so much trouble compared to the actual talk.”

“I suppose for those afflicted with indecisiveness.” Lydia leans forward and sets her glass on the table. She has to turn to do so, and when she leans back, she stays twisted about, putting her at right angles to Peter. He’s watching her and she can still sense tension running through him, something that the wolfish smile he gives her cannot completely account for. “Which is not a problem that I generally am troubled with.”

Stiles alternates between the bottles, high and low moans, and then he laughs and picks one up. He pours a little of its contents into another bottle, then applies his thumb to the rim. His head tilts as a slightly lower note rises from the bottle. “No? Well, should we just get down to the rules, in that case?”

“No,” Lydia says. He twists to look at her, gangling playfulness suddenly wiped away, and she lets her gaze drift away from him as she lifts her arms, pulls the pins from her hair. She collects them in one hand and shakes free her locks with the other.

Her hand bumps into something: Peter’s arm. He sucks his breath a little and she turns to him, then bends her arm about to undo the top buttons of the back of her dress. The line of them march up her from waist nearly to hairline and she can only reach two before she has to untwist and lower her arms, carefully working out the strain.

“There’s another matter to speak to first,” she says, looking straight at Peter. “Competing claims we should settle.”

Peter presses his lips together. He seems torn between irritation and nervousness, and is throwing his shoulders back to position himself for an indignant response when Stiles snorts. “Oh, what, you’re going to press that? Didn’t you send him my way?” Stiles says. “Wasn’t that the whole point, showing you already knew what to do?”

“I _intended_ to, but he came ahead, on his own business. Which is exactly that—his. So there’s still the debt he owes me, and that came prior to yours,” Lydia replies coolly. She sinks her fingers into her hair, bunching the thick strands in her hand, and then turns her wrist to pull the mass off her neck.

“Money he owes,” Stiles says. He lifts his head, looking at her over the bottle. He’s amused, but respectfully. He wants an explanation, not a challenge.

Peter understands as well, and suddenly pushes himself up on one arm, so that they both look at him. Every inch of him is strained to the fullest: the white-knuckled grip on the sofa, the cant of his shoulders towards the door on the other side of Stiles, the look in his eyes. He looks like a man teetering between a long fall and a pack of hounds, and for a moment Lydia presses her free hand on the sofa cushion, ready to propel herself from him.

But it passes, that desperation of his. He is too clever for that. Too clever to pretend they haven’t seen either, and instead he dips his head, acknowledges it as he stoops down, a dry chuckle escaping him while his hands lightly touch down to either side of Lydia’s dress buttons.

“Oh, it’s not money with her. It never has been,” Peter says. His voice starts rough, a little caught in his throat, but as he gently picks each pearled knob from its loop, it smooths into a silky charm. “In fact, I don’t think I can even say that money is a way of keeping count, as with the higher class of misers. In that she was always fully qualified for this club.”

“I’m hardly a miser,” Lydia says. She lowers her arm, pulling her hair over her shoulder and letting it drift down over her breast. Her dress loosens and the cool air of the room strokes at the bared skin of her neck and the top of her back. When Peter’s fingers follow, delicately brushing the dress from her shoulders, she mistakes it for more of the same and succumbs to a shiver upon realizing the truth. “I pay when I’m confident of the value.”

For all the lingering notes of panic, Peter’s not one to let such an opening pass. His right hand continues to pluck at the buttons, while his left slides firmly between the dress and Lydia’s corset, rounding her waist before returning to tease in between the corset laces and loosen them as well. He bends down and when she breathes in, her shoulder rises high enough to brush his mouth as he leans over her.

Lydia flushes with irritation. Jackson hadn’t even bothered to provide any physical benefit to her marriage for months before the final separation and it’s not only men who desire, she thinks. She straightens up and Peter presses his mouth to her shoulder again, a little higher, letting the caress go on a little longer. Her hand twitches against her knee and then she smooths out her fingers, smooths out her skirts. Pulls them down so that she can slip her arms out of the dress sleeves.

Stiles seems half-indifferent, continuing to tune his bottles, pouring from one into the other and then listening to the changes in pitch. But his eyes regularly slide over the two of them, and when the whole front of Lydia’s dress finally slips to her waist, when Peter inhales as if surfacing from the ocean and then buries his face in her neck, circles her breasts with his hands—Stiles laughs, of course he does, but the glass rim under his thumb shrieks.

Peter startles and his hands begin to drop. Lydia seizes his wrists. Then, as Stiles finally comes over, as she looks at him and digs her nails into Peter’s arms till Peter hisses into her nape, Peter suddenly slumps into her.

“So I have value,” he murmurs into her hair, soft and vicious. The weight of him threatens to press her off the sofa; she rocks her thumbnail till she draws blood from his wrist, but he refuses to shift. “Do I, now? And do I matter? Have I earned that status from you, and without even trying—”

“You made your play already, now I want to know about hers,” Stiles says. It’s a reprimand, but it’s casual, and so is the way he reaches over and grips Peter’s shoulder when Peter straightens. “Did he tell you, by the way? What that was?”

Lydia pushes herself up, and then the breath of her would-be response is whisked from her as Peter, grunting, slides over the top of the sofa. He twists around as he comes, one foot knocking sharply into the sofa’s heavy wooden frame, and lands with his back up against Stiles. One of his hands lands on Lydia’s lap and wraps over her thigh, but there’s no violence in it, only a quest for support as Stiles wraps both arms around Peter from behind, lover-like but for how one hand clamps about the front of Peter’s throat. Peter’s head goes back in a silent gasp and Stiles nuzzles at his ear, drags the other hand into the open front of Peter’s shirt.

“No,” Lydia finally says. She watches as Peter flexes sharply against Stiles—sharply, but for all that it’s unclear whether he wishes to move away or into. Then the matter settles itself, as Stiles laps his fingers up over Peter’s jaw, curling their tips into Peter’s mouth, and Peter’s eyes close as his lips close, as he sucks feverishly at the other man’s fingers. “I don’t care to, either.”

Stiles looks curiously at her. “No?” he says. He seats himself on the edge of the couch and pulls Peter more firmly against him, his lower hand roaming with an almost absent air as it loosens the front of Peter’s trousers. “Why not?”

“Would it matter if I did?” Lydia asks.

“Well, for you and me settling up, no,” Stiles says. Then he appears to meditate for a few seconds. His fingers slip from Peter’s mouth and paint shining trails down the side of Peter’s neck, then join the other hand in ridding Peter of his clothing. “What do you want from him?”

She nearly doesn’t catch the question. She’s ready to hear a different one, and it’s only the airless, knowing chuckle from Peter that stops her and makes her listen. Lydia looks at Peter and he smiles at her, all his reluctance gone. Then presses down on the hand he has on her thigh, using it to rise up above her as he twists free of his trousers.

His shirt follows, and then he sinks back down, kneeling on the sofa between Lydia and Stiles. She allows his hand up to that point and then she pushes it off. Peter hisses, caught off-balance, but Stiles grins and pulls the man back. Then, when Peter bobs up to continue to glower at her, he catches both of Peter’s wrists and twists Peter’s arms behind him.

“Her pride,” Peter says, his head bowed. He rocks heavily against the cushions, then lets out a long, straining breath as he lowers himself till his chest is resting on the sofa. His head is on her skirts, at least till she pulls them up, and then he turns and rests it on the point of his chin and looks up between her legs, gaze stroking up the front of her till it comes to her face. “That’s all you’ve ever wanted, isn’t it? That’s what you want from me, and from every other man who’s been foolish enough to take from you.”

“Well.” Lydia looks at Stiles, but he shrugs and nods to Peter. So she turns to him, folding up her knees and splaying them, her pelvis canting down till his breath is moistening her. He keeps looking at her, with an aggravating glint in his eye that tells her he expects no less. “That’s where to start,” she says, sliding her hands about Peter’s head.

His teeth glide against the heel of her palm. Just a second, just a touch, not a bite, but it startles her so that he can press forward out of her grip.

She seizes him again, twisting her fingers in his hair, but by then he already has his mouth on her. Sucking, lewd, open sucking, immediately unstringing her hips, sending her body arching roughly against the imprisoning corset. Jackson would never have—never even understood that pleasure didn’t center on his cock, let alone would have plunged so shamelessly into something that would have required him to look away from himself.

Lydia heaves for air, pressing herself up against the arm of the sofa, and Peter squirms after her, working his lips and tongue till it seems that all the blood in her body is being drawn down towards him. She almost feels as if he’s drinking her alive, and she—her hand jerks from his hair and she grabs at the top of the sofa. Forces herself up, then slips back on boneless thighs as a gasp slams into her breast as if a pole’s been driven into her from behind. Her corset twists around her till its cups ride up over her breasts. The bottom edges scrape her nipples and she throws back her head, shuddering, as the ache in them sweeps down between her legs to swell in the heat gathered up by Peter’s mouth, over and over and over.

And over. She sinks back against the sofa. Her fingers drag through something soft and damp, just before it jerks away from her. When she looks up, it’s to face Peter’s transfixed expression, his mouth gaping open, a wet black inside. The light slicks over his jaw and throat, painting gleaming streaks, before he abruptly tips onto her.

Stiles is fucking him. His arms now tied behind him with a belt, his moaning head inching up Lydia’s belly as she slowly catches her breath. She tugs at her corset till the misplaced cups are no longer crushing her breasts, and one breast swings entirely free and Peter nuzzles blindly at it, then traps the nipple with his lips and nurses desperately. Lydia hisses, her body still sore, and her knees come up and close about Peter as his cock starts to rub come along the inside of her thigh.

Peter shudders twice, then goes still, his head still cradled against Lydia’s breast. She looks at the dark snarl of hair against her, and then up at Stiles. Then she starts a little—he’s short of breath but his eyes are by no means dazed.

“Where’s the end, then?” Stiles asks, cocking his head. He smooths an absent hand over Peter’s trembling back as if he’s soothing a worked-out mount.

“It…I wanted.” Lydia closes her eyes for a moment. “I wanted him to know I wouldn’t forget. Not this time. Because they always do. And they think, they always think, because they’ve forgotten you, then you’ll do the same…”

Stiles cocks his head the other way and then smiles. His hand caresses Peter’s back again, then slides up to take Peter by the hair, twist his head till Peter lifts bleary eyes to Lydia. “I think that’s clear now,” Stiles says.

Lydia nods shortly. Stiles takes his hand from Peter and for a moment longer, Peter keeps his head up. He struggles to do so, but he looks at Lydia and in his eyes there is a silent acknowledgment. A promise as well—he will remember, and at the end he is no more and no less careful, or merciful, about those he remembers as she is. 

“I already know what he asked you for,” she says, and Peter’s lips twitch towards a smile before he puts his head back on her breast. “Something for him, and only him. He wouldn’t bother taking from others if he truly had something himself.”

“Well, well, you two do know how it goes, don’t you? That should make Scott and Allison feel better.” Stiles settles down over Peter. Gives Peter’s hair a careless pet, snorting at the exhausted groan Peter lets out, and then he moves his hand past Peter, to just touch Lydia’s cheek with his fingers. “And you and me, we’ve still to settle. Since Peter brought himself, in the end.”

At that Lydia can’t help a sigh. “Yes, I owe you my soul, or someone else’s soul, or something along those lines. That’s how your kind work, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t think you do. For one, you don’t owe me _yet_ ,” Stiles says. He waits for her to look at him again, then grins at her. He’d look a callow youth if not for the sudden darkness all around them, so dark that even if he wasn’t the only bright thing, she wouldn’t want to look away for fear of going mad at the blackness. But he is bright—so very bright, almost as bright as the sun. “Your family’s land, that was just so you didn’t think I’d forgotten. Because I had a feeling. You didn’t really believe I knew what I was talking about, the first time we met. That’s what you were thinking, and that’s not true. You knew that before you even walked in, you know that. You knew I was what you wanted, just like I knew you were, too.”

Lydia stares at him. She feels a little cold, despite the two men lying on her, and for a moment she thinks she understands what had shaken Peter so badly. It is one thing to know, another to understand, and a third—a third to _see_. And what she sees, when she looks into Stiles’ eyes…

“First rule,” Stiles continues. “Nothing’s a debt now. Either you want to or you don’t, and it doesn’t mean anything if you yourself don’t want to. Second rule—if you want to, you do it. No hesitation. And the third rule, the important one.”

He pauses. She waits for him, and then, a flash of anger suddenly warming her, lighting up the dark against him—there should be no more contempt towards her, not after what she’s done or with what she’s prepared to do, not from any man or any _thing_ —she jerks her head up. “Which is?”

Stiles laughs. “Oh, you know that one quite well. It’s what brought you to me in the first place, Lydia.”

His fingers run over her mouth and she bares her teeth. Then, thinking the better of it, she smiles, and when he bends down to kiss her, a kiss of pure fire, she’s still smiling.

Indeed, she does.

What’s yours stays yours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Using variously-filled bottles as a musical instrument was actually a parlor hobby for people back in the day. Also there are stories about sorcerers, etc. keeping trapped souls in bottles.
> 
> Just a reminder that Lucifer is also referred to as the Morningstar, which references Venus, which as the brightest "star" in the sky, is traditionally seen as a counterpart to the sun.


	10. Chapter 10

“Your references—” Then the shriek of metal cuts through the air. Lydia lifts her parasol, shielding herself from the dusting of soot that falls immediately afterward.

The man in front of her grimaces, his eyes flicking behind her to the quivering pipes belching out all that soot, but otherwise he stands his ground while every other person within sight flinches, and many cross themselves. With the quarantine barely lifted, the ghost stories are already circulating. The newly-discovered coal deposits do go far to make people look the other way, but this man seems unusually tolerant of the screams and moans about the mines being drilled on Lydia’s family estate, even for an engineer. 

“They’re there,” he says, rudely hooking his chin at the handful of papers Lydia has. “And my proposed plans, and that’s less likely to blow up your house than what anybody else is going to try and sell you on.”

“I don’t live in it,” Lydia says icily. She gives her parasol handle a twist, shaking off the soot—a little flicks into the man’s face and he grimaces again, but refuses to retreat—and then tucks it under her arm so she can flip through his designs.

He makes a poor attempt at suppressing an irritated noise, but doesn’t interrupt as she looks through the papers. She can sense his attention shifting to the house, which still stands as grand and ornate as it did in her childhood, even if it is only the stone shell: the quarantine fires hadn’t spared anything from the interior. Lydia supposes she should find some use for it, or else sell the remaining stone off to the builders. Otherwise it’s a waste and there is no waste in her life now.

“I’ll do it for half as much, too,” the man abruptly says. When she looks up, the downwards cant of his head betrays a faint shame. “On the condition that—that you help me with something.”

“I am hiring engineers,” Lydia says, smoothing her hands over the papers. “Not running a charity.”

The man’s brows draw together. “I am an engineer. And it’s not much, I’m only…I’m looking for my uncle, and you’ve met him. I know you’ve met him. He said you and he had worked together.”

Lydia looks the man over again, and then draws in her breath slowly as she straightens up. Behind them, down the hill, smoke flares up from the mouth of the mine again, from the machinery that vomits out of it, and her nose fills with the burn of its smell. She watches the man stifle a snort while her own lungs slowly smolder. Then she looks at the empty house to the other side of them.

“What do you want him for?” she asks, still looking at the house. A shadow crosses one of the upper windows.

“You know—so you do know about Peter. Peter Hale,” the man says, startling and then settling quickly into suspiciousness. “He’s my—”

“Uncle, yes, you said that,” Lydia says. She looks at him again, then takes out her watch and checks the time.

“He owes me—owes my sister and me some things. Not money. It’s a personal—a family matter,” the man says. He shifts uneasily on his feet. “I just want to know where he is so we can—so we can ask him. Some things happened and he was there and we weren’t and we want to know…it’s private, actually. I don’t think you need to know the details to tell me where to find him.”

Nearly time for Stiles’ carriage to arrive, and Lydia thinks it may just come early today. No doubt he was expecting the man, and failed to tell Lydia, or have Peter tell her, for reasons of his own. “I agree that this is best discussed in private,” she says, smiling when the man glowers at her willful misunderstanding. “Come into the house.”

The man tenses. He still doesn’t retreat, though it’s clear in his face that he senses the need to. “I thought you said you don’t live there.”

“I don’t. But I’m not asking you to live there either. I’m only asking if you’ll come in so we can speak,” Lydia says. “There’s no commitment yet, I haven’t decided to hire you. We’ll only talk.”

“That’s fine,” the man says, but he stays where he is. “Talk’s fine. But I want to know. If I do take the job, will you—”

“Do my work and I will see to you,” Lydia tells him, folding up her parasol. She gives the tip a sharp knock against the hard, stony ground, then pulls an oilskin cover over it to keep the remaining soot from smearing onto her skirts. Then she starts up towards the house. “I do know your uncle. He does do work for me, from time to time. But—” she pauses, waits for the man’s muttered curse to pass, for his steps to catch up to her “—you will have to work for me, too. You should understand that.”

The man snorts. “I do. I know the rules.”

Lydia glances back at him, then smiles as she resumes her progress towards the house. “Do you,” she says. “Well, come. We’ll speak.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My seasonal allergies and the antihistamines I have to take to keep them in control basically knocked out my writing plans for more Cthulhic fusion comedy, because my head's been too fuzzy to string together snappy dialogue. I've been watching/reading a bunch of Gothic and folk horror type stuff and it occurred to me that having Lydia icily put down people while she and Peter and Stiles all tried to game each other might make for a fun alternative while I waited for my sinuses to clear. And it's a trio I haven't written much.
> 
> So yeah, look, there aren't ever any direct explanations about what happens, and I wrote this in a very abstract style. Where I prefer folk horror over Gothic is Gothic's tendency to literally explain every detail at the end of the story, which for me takes away a lot of the creepiness. And I like to play around with style, is all I can say.


	11. Prequel Chapter: The Descent of Man

Once Chris looks over everything laid out on the bed, he takes a cold bath.

The water’s so chilly he half-expects to have to crack through plates of rime to get into it, but his limbs slip under the surface as easily as a hot knife into butter, and less precisely: the cold hits his muscles like hammers and turns his body unwieldy, recalcitrant. He almost has to slap his fingers to have them bend over the edge of the tub, and keep his head in the air.

He doesn’t spend much time in the water. The bath is part of the preparation, or so he’s been instructed, but he thoroughly cleaned himself before getting into the carriage and the trip across such a rural, soot-free area hardly dirtied him again. But he understands the point. When he finally does arise, his cock is a shriveled, wan-looking thing, hiding up between his thighs.

No soap is provided, but there is a towel. His numbed fingers seem to sink forever before the plush stops giving way and he’s able to pick it up. The room is quite warm, with extra braziers distributed about where the fire in the hearth can’t penetrate, but he dries off almost entirely before the feeling returns to his hands.

His skin still feels a little detached from him, as if it’s somebody else’s freshly-shaved chest, belly, groin under his hands. He’s never been particularly hairy but to be so denuded is—unfamiliar. He avoided looking too closely when he was tending to himself, but now he can’t help it. Pins and needles muddle up under the press of his fingers and then seem to flush outward, except can’t make out a trace of it on his skin. It’s still so pale from the cold bath, the lines of his limbs so unexpectedly straight and simple. He’s possibly never seen himself like this since before he became a man. Maybe never—he wasn’t much for introspection when he was a child. That fault, or weakness, or lesson, that only came with age.

Chris puts the towel aside and walks over to the bed. His cock is still numbed and when he picks it up between his thumb and forefinger, he’s half-tempted to pinch in harder, so little does he feel it. He sees it lift and can feel the weight of it against his palm, but in his cock itself, he only feels the passing rasp of his fingers, and even then, he thinks his mind might be imagining the sensation to fill in the hole.

The cock binding goes on first. Leather softened to the suppleness of butter, lightly powdered, just like any lady’s gloves straight from the glovemaker. It pulls down so easily over his prick that he exhales in surprise afterward, blinking sharply. Then he shakes himself, sets his shoulders. Gets on with it and tugs at the cord that laces the length of it, ties a double knot to keep the sheath’s grip firm. The cord’s ends are long enough to brush against his balls and he shifts on his feet a little; more of the feeling is coming back into his body.

A nest of leather straps dangle from the end of the cock sheath and he has to puzzle them out before he can fit the second sheath over the top half of his scrotum. Tightening the laces takes a little more effort; even with the chill of the bath, his balls don’t easily lend themselves to a columnar shape, but he breathes out against the twinge of discomfort and ties the laces off. When he straightens up, the muscles in his groin continue to twitch, pulling against the slow-growing tension that radiates out from his privates, and there are a few drops of sweat mingling with the bath’s lingering damp at his temple.

His balls look very odd, given a kind of ‘waist’ by the sheath with the rounded, cleft end squeezed down and starting to flush. It brushes against his inner thigh as he turns to the bed and he grabs at the bedpost, sucks his breath, because for a second he could have sworn he felt a pressed finger against him.

It’s just the pooling blood, turning his skin so sensitive that every touch is magnified. His cock head’s the same, every accidental sway of it against his thigh sending suppressed shivers up through its length, making him imagine the leather binding creaking against the tension. Chris catches his hand strayed down and pressing against his groin mere inches away, fingers half-clenched, the thought to wrap his palm over the cock end and simply _press_ floating up with a vicious, longing clarity.

He pulls his hand away, and hurries a little, picking up the stockings. They’re the finest silk, like water, and he swallows a curse as he almost lets them slither through his fingers. Then again, when the calluses on his hands hook against them and he has to lift them fearfully to the firelight, wondering if he’s torn the damn things.

He hasn’t, but he’s fortunate. He’s also dressing in the wrong order, he knows that, but every swing of his privates weighs on him, the way that the leather seems to grip more and more tightly at them, and he wants to not have to keep bending over and increasing the swing’s arc. He thinks that, then laughs, and then pulls on the stockings.

It’s hard not to use his nails, the silk slips so much, but he rolls them on over his knees and high enough on his thighs that the stretch of them will keep the tops in place for now. He has to take a few breaths afterward, but he’s composed enough when he picks up the undergarments.

Gauze. Thinner than the stockings, he thinks, spreading them over his fingers with the same care he uses to stroke down the eyelids of a corpse. In the low yellow light, he can see the veins of his hands through them.

They’re difficult to get on. They stick to the stockings and he ends up bending over more than he should have to, smoothing the two things apart, but eventually he gets them up and over his cock and balls, and then over his buttocks. The garment is more closely tailored than it looked: shaped into shorts, with ribbons to gather in the waist and bottom hems, but when he ties those off, the gauze goes taut over his buttocks, following their curves into the dip between them. He hisses at the lingering brush of the stuff and in front, his cock twitches impotently against the equally-close panel of gauze there.

There are slits in the garment, front and back. The back slit is already gaping a good inch open when he slicks up his fingers with the provided oil, his fingers and the skin-smooth, eerily body-warm ivory cock that goes into him. He bites his lower lip and keeps it between his teeth, worrying at it as he snorts his breath through his nose in quick bursts, and then, when the cock is completely seated, drops over the bed and grabs at his discarded towel—vestiges of his childhood training telling him not to get his oiled hands on the bedcovers—and lets out a long, low moan. The gauze cupping his ass shifts back and forth as his body shivers about the ivory cock, like teasing palms, and he twists his fingers in the towel to keep from ripping it off.

Then he keeps twisting his fingers in the towel. He cleans the oil off his hands and then, using the bedpost for help, stands up again. The garter belt—it might not be next, but his stockings are nearly over his knees and he needs it before those fall any farther. He loops it around his waist and buckles it, then, cursing, unbuckles it and smooths the twist in one side. Then rebuckles it and works up the stocks till he can catch their tops with the clasps dangling from either side of the belt.

When he stands up this time, the head of his cock slides out of the front slit. He presses his lips together and reaches down to press his cock back in, and that is an error—he ends up burrowing his two fingers deep into the slit, moaning, his face pressed against the bedpost, as sticky beads leak out over his fingertips and dampen the undergarment. When he finally manages to pull his hand free, the stick of his cock head against the silk feels like a kiss of fire and he finds it easier to go to his knees than to stand.

Chris does remember to ring the small handbell they’ve left on the bed. He doesn’t quite remember what happens next—he’s so intent on his breath, on his knees, on keeping his head from falling any lower, he never looks up. Anyway, the staff here is trained to discretion, and know far better than him what needs to be done.

He’s fitted into a corset, despite not coming off his knees that he knows of. It’s less uncomfortable than he would have expected, even with the uncompromising clasp of whalebone about his waist and up his chest. It holds him, rather than his having to hold himself, and when he realizes that and relaxes into it, his breathing slows of its own accord. The garter belt’s pulled up over it, properly, and adjustments are made so that his stockings run smoothly over his legs when he does stand again.

The corset looks expensive. He’s not one to trouble himself with fashion, aside from recognizing what will and will not make one stand out, and so he couldn’t tell you all of the undoubtedly meaningful details. It has lace at the top with sharp points that flick at his nipples every time he breathes, and more lace down the sides, and silk panels that stroke at his overheated skin when he lowers his arms, making him moan again. He’s not even sensitive on his arms, he thinks—he conducts his business in the rough countryside, he’s only gentry in the loosest sense of the word, and when he crawls onto the bed, his tanned limbs make him look like a blot against the white sheets. But shaving himself left all his nerve endings exposed to the slightest tingle, it seems, turning his whole body as desperate as the prick bound up and throbbing behind rapidly-wetting silk.

They’ve tied his wrists together, buckling them up in leather just as soft as that around his cock, but just as ungiving. He twists his hands, then presses the knuckles against his face so the sweat runs off his forehead and between them, down the backs to sprinkle the bed. Then he lifts his head. Looks at the short chain that fastens to the foot of the bed, and then up at the man standing there.

“Argent,” says the sheriff.

Chris’ mouth is dry. He licks his lips, rolls his tongue around his mouth—can’t make himself stop panting for that, and his breath almost pushes out the spit so he drools—and then, when he speaks, his voice still cracks. “Sir.”

The sheriff’s coat-less, vest-less, more casual than even when he’s out arresting poachers in the woods. His sleeves are loosely rolled to his elbows and he has dirt under one nail. He looks amused, with a faint cast of wariness over that. He walks around to the side of the bed, the side that Chris is sprawled nearest to, and reaches out and lays his hand on Chris’ ankle. Tugs back, when Chris twists to follow him and ends up pulling down on the chain and being caught up short by it. Tugs and holds, his eyes running up and down as Chris arches between the two points, his hand and the chain at the foot at the bed.

“So you’re cooperating now?” he finally says. He waits for Chris to moan, then moves his hand. Up to Chris’ knee and then back down, and then up again, higher, shaping his fingers around Chris’ leg, over the stocking.

Chris tries to answer, but the sheriff gathers up a fold of silk and rubs his fingers into it, dragging against the silk’s weave. It’s still silk, it’s hardly an iron rasp, but that’s what it feels like, the rubbing, back and forth across the inside of Chris’ thigh. It’s too much and Chris flops out his elbows, tries to crawl away, but the sheriff simply reaches up and slips his hand through the front slit of the undergarment, and suddenly that hand has him by the cock. The balls. It fondles him carelessly as he writhes against the bed, his world suddenly narrowed to the grip on him. The vise of the corset against his ribs, the leather around his wrists, the laces digging into the underside of his cock and the back of his scrotum.

“Jesus Christ,” the sheriff says, low, still casual, but a thread of something hot and dangerous rising in it. His thumbnail clicks down the line of lacing that constrains Chris’ cock, and each flick catches the air in Chris’ throat. Chris can’t even meet the sheriff’s eyes now, can only stare at the blurring glint of the chain anchor. “You spend years running me and my men around, doing whatever you please and thumbing your nose at the law, and never mind what a little word here and there might help to ease things along, keep it _quiet_ —”

There’s another hand running over Chris now. Still the one toying with his cock, now bunching up silk around the overheated bottom of his balls and crossing the edge of a nail over it, but there’s another one. He can feel the pressure of it moving up the corset, pushing down on his belly and then his breast, even though he already can barely breathe. When it hits his skin, when it’s not only pressure but _heat_ , he gasps without the air to gasp with. Then sags down. Puts his own throat into the sheriff’s hand, his chin hooking over the fingers that force it back up.

“—and you keep your own damn secrets, so it’s not as if it’s even anything to do about protecting people,” the sheriff tells him. Passing a thumb over his lower lip, almost tender. “And then this? You think this is enough to change that?”

“I—” The world is filling up with dark spots and Chris struggles to keep ahead of them, keep clear enough that he can do what he came here to do. He heaves himself into the hand around his throat, stupidly, looking for air. “—I want—”

He can’t. He’s not going to have the breath for it, and there’s just that rising sourness of alarm when a sharp, sudden pain freezes him in his place. His mouth opens and a broad, rough palm covers it and his nose, and for a second breathing isn’t his responsibility.

Then the sheriff moves his hand. The one over Chris’ face, then the one wrenching at Chris’ balls. The second one is slower, agonizingly slow, the trickle of relief worse than the pain, but it makes Chris pace his breathing. The dark spots go away. His throat is burning, and his head is still spinning, the corset a clamp that barely holds in the flaring ache behind his ribs, but he can speak.

“I want to confess,” he says, looking right into the sheriff’s eyes. He sees the spark of disbelief, and behind that, the brighter glow of anger, and he dredges up enough strength to press himself up against the bed. He can’t lift his head but he rolls it to rest on top of his wrists, so he can keep himself looking up. His legs are trembling and they want to splay so he lets them, but he forces his hips into the air.

The sheriff’s eyes flick away, then back to Chris’ face. “Confess.”

“I broke into your house. Your office.” Chris coughs, out of air, and then shudders and groans as the sheriff tugs his hand free of the undergarment. A careless—or perhaps careful—flicked finger trails briefly against the silk, sticking it up against Chris till the weight of Chris’ cock shakes it loose, leaving it to hang and slide maddeningly against his balls. “I—I saw—I found—”

He cuts himself off because the sheriff cuts off, pivoting away from the bed with a suddenness that sends an unpleasantly cold streak through the thick, oven-steaming haze that seems to have filled the room since Chris first arrived. Chris hauls his head an inch above his hands and then the sheriff turns back, wide leather belt in hand, and Chris moans and lets his knees spread farther apart.

“You broke into my house.” The sheriff seats himself on the edge of the bed. He looks at Chris for a little while. The room _is_ warm, not only Chris: sweat touches the sheriff’s temple, the part of his collarbone peaking from his open shirt, but the sheriff’s tone is still unhurried and methodical. “But you knew what you were looking for already. You would, with what you got from your family. Wouldn’t you?”

Before he’s done speaking, he reaches over and puts his hand between Chris’ legs. He doesn’t touch Chris, not till Chris tries to hunch back towards him, and then his fingers tickle the strip of skin between the top of the stocking and the bottom of the undergarment. The silk is clinging to Chris now, sodden, and when the sheriff runs his fingers over it, Chris shivers but the wet fabric is in the way, doesn’t let him feel the whole touch. It’s only when callused fingertips rough up his actual skin that that aching moan drags up out of his throat.

“I did. I knew, but I—I thought but I wasn’t—” he says to his hands.

“Oh, you knew. You don’t think, that kind of thing. You knew. You weren’t looking for _proof_ ,” the sheriff points out. He’s always been a little more reasonable than he has to be, in Chris’ opinion. Letting people know that he knows without rubbing their face in it.

But he’s rubbing now, with the heel of his hand. Digging into Chris’ thigh with it, working it up as if he’s rolling the building pressure in Chris along with it. At first Chris grinds back down into it, the corset whalebone popping as it strains to keep his body in line, but the sheriff pushes harder and higher, till he’s right up between Chris’ legs, right behind the balls and it’s too much, like that heel is pressing all the air right into the backs of Chris’ eyes, and Chris twists his fingers into the chain and tries to pull himself away.

The sheriff pulls his hand away. Lets Chris drop, almost belly-flat, and then the belt cracks across both of Chris’ buttocks.

It shreds the undergarment. Chris hears that as clearly as he does the snap of the leather. Sound is first, he thinks dimly, thunder before lightning and _then_. Then. God. Lightning. It’s like a pillar of fire, ramming through him, and before it’s over he is shaking and burnt, hanging from his chains by only his sinews.

“No,” he groans. “No. Not proof. But—I looked. I looked, and—”

He’s struck again. Underside of his buttocks, catching him as he rises up from the shock of the first blow. The ivory cock in him jars, and it’s like throwing handfuls of matches on the coals, little flares all over when he thinks the worst of it is over.

“Where?” the sheriff asks him.

Chris pries his hands from around the chain and claws into the bedding instead. Thick, down-filled coverlet. Embroidery. Brocade that rasps his nipples when he presses himself down against it, but if he pushes back up onto his arms, the lace on the corset pricks them. He can’t free his hands to hold the lace out of the way so he has to rub it away, and when he rubs, the belt comes down on him. “Desk. The drawers. Three of them. Then—then—saw the carpet seam. Found—found the door, the trapdoor, pulled it up, and—and—”

The blows stop. It’s worse that way, Chris thinks. The pain has time to come to full bloom, making water out of his knees as the sheriff hums and runs fingertips over the swelling welts. Sometimes he scratches Chris and the scratch seems to split straight down through Chris’ body, through his groin, till it pools up in his cock but the leather sheath won’t let it go any further. Chris drags in sobbing breath after sobbing breath and something floats at the edge of his vision and he realizes that the sheriff has pulled off the rags of the undergarment.

“And you looked,” the sheriff finishes for him. Stroking his shivering, fawn-unsteady inner thighs. His knee slips and the sheriff sighs and hauls him back up with one arm around his waist. The other circling around too, picking at his scrotum as he whines and twitches and only ends up chafing his newly-beaten buttocks against the other man’s shirt. “Didn’t go down?”

Chris lurches suddenly. He doesn’t know why, and then a shock ripples warmly through him, the way it feels when one goes from cold into a hot bath and the heat of the water goes into the core, and he flops himself into the sheriff’s hand as the sheriff’s fingers replace the leather that had been constricting his balls.

“No.” He bites his lips to get them wet; they’re too chapped now for him to just lick them. “No. Not—not then. Just—looked. So—for later. When I—when I’d have to.”

“When you had to,” the sheriff echoes. It’s a warning, the way his tone tightens, and Chris is arching even as the sheriff’s palm smacks down on him, squarely over the blunt end of the ivory cock.

The belt had avoided it. Chris had thought the belt would be the most brutal but this is, for all that it’s not as strong a blow. For a second he’s a marionette with cut strings, dazed and limp in the sheriff’s hold. His thighs are spasming uncontrollably, and he can hear his feet shuffling in a rhythmless dance across the bed as the sheriff unhooks his wrists from the chain, pulls him towards the middle of the bed. Bundles his arms against his chest, pins them there and tugs the ivory cock out of him and then seats him onto a real, flesh cock that feels even harder and more bruising.

“When you had to,” the sheriff says again. Right against Chris’ lolling head, lips moving behind Chris’ ear, along Chris’ throat, against the side of Chris’ jaw. From a distance it might look like caresses. “Right, when you had to, when you didn’t think you had any other choice, when you were just desperate enough to come down to me and beg because _now_ we’re better, only now we’re better than your father and what he had you at—”

The corset’s looser. Not undone, it’s still catching up Chris’ breath too much for that, but the sheriff must have untied the laces, or maybe slit one of the panels. When Chris twists on the man’s lap, on his _cock_ , he can feel the whalebone shaking away from him. Can’t keep up, can’t keep its grip, not with how he’s being rocked to pieces. His legs are still useless and his feet work haphazardly against the bedding as the sheriff presses up into his welted buttocks, thumb digging into the bruised edges if he stops squirming.

“Better than your _father_ ,” the sheriff snarls, right against the pulse of Chris’ throat, fangs in his voice. “Right? We’re the better deal now?”

“I—” Chris wishes he was facing the other way, could tip onto the man’s shoulder instead of constantly fighting not to fall forward. He’s worked hard enough, he needs to rest, even he’s not invincible. He’s always known that. Just like he’s already known—he bucks up as the sheriff roughly fists over his still-bound cock—he’d still have to work for it. “I—I _want_ —”

The sheriff goes still. He’s warm as Chris. Naked too, he’s stripped at some point and Chris can feel the places where sweat wants to stick their skin together. His heart is thumping into Chris’ back, and his breath is uneven and hot on Chris’ throat. His hand lingers on Chris’ cock, and when Chris, unable to keep still, humps up and down on his cock, his fingers curl around and tangle into the laces knotted around the back of Chris’ prick, making it swing side to side so that its head lightly slaps into Chris’ thigh.

“I want,” Chris says heavily. “I want it. Now. I want—it’s of my free—I want you to. I want you to let me in. I’ll pay but I—I want to pay. I didn’t go down when I found because I didn’t—wasn’t just I didn’t need it and I know—I know when you want—what you want—”

For another moment the sheriff is silent. Then he laughs, deep and pleased, and his mouth, it presses hotly to the skin behind Chris’ ear, branding Chris as surely as his hand stakes a claim when it pulls away the leather from Chris’ prick. Chris’ body is seizing behind the sudden lack of binding, uncontrollable, inevitable, and nothing is going to stop his climax but he knows, just as the man behind him does, that that’s meaningless now. He can come but he’ll never go, just as that hold on him will never lift, regardless of where it is.

But for now, _now_ , it is on his cock and it is steering him into the blindness of oblivion, thumb gently pressing at the rim of his cock head, milking, just as the cock buried deep in him is pushing him on, and he doesn’t care about anything except following that lead to the very end of him.

* * *

“You need soap,” Chris says, surprised. He’s still dazed. When he moves, his limbs are a beat slow, and he keeps finding himself looking to make sure they arrive where he expects them to arrive.

That will get him killed, he thinks, and then he snorts to himself and rolls heavily over, and looks at the man toweling off at the side of the bed. “Not everything has to be a spectacle,” the sheriff says. He looks at the half-foamed bar in his hand, then drops it beside the tub. “Soap works just as well as burning off the filth. Don’t see why we shouldn’t use it. We’ve enough other things to make a show out of.”

The corset is ruined, part of the top crumpled so badly that a whalebone rib has stabbed through the silk, and here and there the lace and silk are scorched, as if just grazed by fiery fingertips. Chris pushes it out of the way, and then drags himself over assorted other soiled rags as he crawls to the edge of the bed. He stops to catch his breath, watching as the sheriff stretches. Bones pop. Firelight slides over a broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped body, laving at the corded muscles, and then shies away from the two shadowy wings that paint the wall behind the sheriff.

They’re great, menacing things that put Chris in mind of hawks and rabbits, of a steep fall and then a welter of blood and broken bone. He shivers and blinks and when he looks again, the wall is free of any shadows. The sheriff is standing in front of him, smiling, and has one hand cradling the side of Chris’ face.

“But I guess we should remind people once in a while,” the sheriff says.

“I already know.” Chris doesn’t mean it as a rebuke, just as a statement. He leans his head into the man’s hand, then hisses as a strange cool susurration passes over him. It’s like a breath, only when the current has gone, he sits up and all his welts and bruises and cuts are gone.

Well, they _look_ gone, but the sheriff presses his thumb against Chris’ lip and every bit of Chris’ body suddenly aches freshly. Chris groans and the thumb dips into his mouth, and when he sucks at it, the pain goes away again.

“Just remember,” the sheriff says to him. “You’re not in your father’s club anymore.”

“I know.” Chris curls his tongue around the sheriff’s thumb before it leaves his mouth, then smiles. “Oh, I know. That’s what I wanted. That’s why I came here. I know that.”

The reflection of himself in the other man’s eyes is surrounded by fire.


End file.
